by Helen Brooks
‘Kim?’ The knock on the cloakroom door corresponded with Lucas’s voice. ‘Are you okay?’
Whether it was the irritations and panic of the morning, or the fact that she felt she had been living on a knife-edge ever since she had first come to work for Lucas, or simply that her period was due soon and she was ready to argue with the bricks in the wall, Kim didn’t know, but suddenly she felt angry.
She wrenched open the door and glared up into Lucas’s face as she said, ‘Of course I’m okay. You haven’t left them all in there to come and ask me that, have you? What will they think?’
‘Think?’ He hadn’t liked her tone and the chiselled face told her so. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about you nipping out here,’ she snapped back testily, aware she was being horrendously unfair but unable to stop herself. ‘They’ll either think you’re checking up on me or that we’re having an affair.’
He stared at her as though she had gone mad. ‘In the first place I have never “nipped” anywhere in my life,’ he said icily, ‘and in the second this is the first time you have been later than half past eight in all the time you’ve worked for me. When I saw a light go on and you still didn’t make an appearance, I wondered if you’d had a bump on the way to work in view of the atrocious weather conditions.’
‘Well, I haven’t.’
‘So it appears.’ The silver eyes narrowed into slits of light. ‘And as for anyone making a judgement on what I do and don’t do as far as my secretary is concerned, it’s none of their damn business.’
‘In other words, you don’t care what assumption they might make,’ she said frostily, as an errant raindrop trickled down her forehead.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He was really furious now; the grey eyes were positively shimmering with white heat.
‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ She knew she ought to stop, she knew it but her tongue seemed to have a life of its own. ‘You might think it’s okay for people to think we’re having an affair but I don’t! Word has probably already got around that we’ve been seeing each other out of work; what do you think that looks like to everyone?’
‘That we like each other?’ Lucas suggested with a silky smoothness that spoke of controlled rage.
‘You know what they’ll think, especially with your reputation,’ she shot back tightly.
‘That enough, Kim.’ He looked as if he was about to shake her.
‘No it’s not. Not nearly enough.’ She couldn’t remember how all this had stared but suddenly she knew this moment had been brewing for weeks, if not months, perhaps from the first days of their relationship when he had started to inveigle himself into her life and into her heart.
She couldn’t be what Lucas wanted her to be. She didn’t have the will-power or the strength to try, or the courage to face the pain and rejection if he decided she wasn’t good enough. Graham had told her she was an empty shell—beautiful packaging with no present inside was how he had described it, once. Useless in bed, frigid, cold—he’d thrown accusation after accusation at her until, in spite of herself, she had begun to believe them. She didn’t dare sleep with Lucas and see the disappointment in his eyes…
‘Come into my office when you’ve calmed down and are ready to begin work,’ Lucas said with cold emphasis. ‘We’ll discuss this later.’
‘I’m giving you my notice.’ Her face was as white as a sheet but her voice was steady. ‘And I am calm.’
‘You’re giving in your notice because I asked you if you were all right?’ Lucas bit out incredulously.
‘No. Yes. I mean…’ She willed herself not to cry, forcing back the tears with superhuman effort. ‘I don’t want to work here any more.’
‘You don’t want to work for me,’ he said grimly. ‘What about Melody?’
‘What about her?’ she said, sticking her chin out. ‘I’ve paid off the last of the debts—’ thanks to his generosity ‘—and we’re solvent again. I can find a job that covers the mortgage and our bills and that’s all I want.’
‘I meant, what about me and Melody?’ he rasped tersely. ‘It might have escaped your notice but your daughter’s got pretty fond of me over the last little while. How is it going to affect her if I disappear out of her life without so much as a by your leave?’
She jerked her head back, her face blazing with a mixture of hot defiance and panic, and it was the panic that made her say the words that cut like a jagged blade. Cruel words, words she didn’t mean even as she voiced them. ‘So all this has been a ploy to get me into your bed through Melody, has it?’ she said in a stony voice that was a cover for the desperate wailing inside. ‘You would actually sink so low to use a child to get what you wanted?’
For a moment he stared at her in blank disbelief, and then she saw a rage such as she’d never seen on any human being’s face darken his countenance like a terrifying winter storm. He stepped into the small cloakroom, slamming the door behind him as his eyes shot white fire into her frightened face.
‘I’ve taken things from you I’ve never taken from any woman,’ he said with deadly intent, ‘and look where it’s got me. I thought you needed time, gentleness, like a highly strung thoroughbred that’s been abused by a moron in an effort to break its will when what it really needed was careful handling and tender persuasion. I’ve tried to show you who and what I am—I’ve bared my soul to you, Kim, and I’ve never done that to another woman. What a damn stupid fool I’ve been.’
‘Lucas, please.’ She was frightened, terrified. There was such revulsion in his eyes she thought she would die from it.
‘And all the time you’ve had me down as the type of sick individual who manipulates a kid in order to get her mother to service him,’ he growled furiously. ‘Because that’s how you think I view it, isn’t it? No finer feelings, no affair of the heart—just bodily needs that require dealing with.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Kim whispered desperately.
‘That’s exactly what you said. Well, maybe I’ll revert to type, then, eh? Give you the satisfaction of telling yourself you were right all along?’
He pulled her against him without any warning and with such savagery that her head snapped back, exposing the pure line of her neck as her face lifted to his.
The cool restraint that had always been a part of his dealings with her was gone, burnt away by the force of the grenade she had thrown at him, and as she began to struggle in his arms his dark head bent and took her mouth in a fiery kiss.
The memory of that last searing time with Graham was suddenly acutely real, but instead of a wet slimy mouth smothering her face, hard, cruel hands ravaging her body voraciously, this was Lucas. His mouth was dominant and determined but it was lighting a fire that was made up of desire, not fear or revulsion, and his mastery of her body, his strength and virility as he crushed her against him, was sending the fire flickering into every nerve and sinew.
She continued to struggle for a few moments more, confusion and whirling distress at his easy command of her senses, his conquest of her mind and body causing her to try and fight when all real protest was gone, swallowed up in the pleasure that was taking hold.
‘You want me, Kim,’ he ground out between increasingly intimate kisses. ‘You might not like that, you might not like me, but you want me nevertheless.’
His hand was cupping her head as he moulded her against him, and she could feel he was already hot and hard and brutally challenging.
‘No…’ It was feeble, humiliatingly so, and he recognised her weakness, his voice holding a quieter, almost gloating note as he said, ‘Yes, oh, yes, my cool little secretary, my elusive ice-queen.’
His hands were ruthlessly exploiting her need of him and she couldn’t resist what his hands and mouth were doing to her, arching against him as she finally gave up all efforts to lie to herself and Lucas, her fingers exploring his hard lean body as intimately as his were doing to her.
It was wild and savage and p
rimitive, a delirious longing to get closer and closer to the man she loved and satisfy their mutual need. There was no past and no future, just the close, desperate exploiting of their shared passion, and with every moment that passed, every delicious sensation that was taking her further and further away from anything she had ever known or imagined, she wanted him more.
She was vaguely aware of where she was but somehow it didn’t matter, it wasn’t real; reality was Lucas’s mouth and hands and the things he was doing to her. And then, as she felt him move her back a pace and position her against the wall, she opened her eyes wide. He was going to take her, right now, with a meeting going on next door and anyone liable to come looking for them.
The same thought must have occurred to Lucas.
The hands that were preparing to hoist her skirt upward froze, his breath laboured and ragged as he fought for control. Kim found herself looking straight into his face and the silver-grey eyes were brilliantly clear, their light burning into her brain as she watched him take raw gulps of air.
When he eased himself away from her it was slowly, giving her time to persuade her trembling legs to take her weight without the support of his arms.
He took a step backwards, raking his hair through a couple of times before adjusting the collar of his shirt and then his tie, and all the time Kim watched him with huge disbelieving eyes.
Her body was burning, aching for an assuagement only he could give, and she couldn’t believe, she just couldn’t take on board that he had stopped.
She saw his hand reach out behind him and open the cloakroom door as he turned, but even when the door began to close again and she was alone she still continued to stand in an attitude of frozen disbelief. And then she began to shake, not so much with the growing feeling of shame that was dawning as the liquid ice of her numbed emotions began to melt and trickle into her bloodstream, but with the knowledge that he was gone, that in the last resort he hadn’t wanted her, he had been able to walk away and leave her.
CHAPTER TEN
AFTER she had transformed herself into the cool, collected Mrs Allen again Kim walked straight out of the cloakroom and continued out of the building.
It was probably the coward’s way out, she told herself, as she drove along the route she had driven just an hour before, but the thought of facing Lucas again was impossible. She would write her formal resignation tonight and for the sake of propriety make the excuse of domestic difficulties making it necessary she leave immediately.
She thought, later, that it was ironic how lies could come back to haunt you.
She took the phone off the hook as soon as she got home, sitting in numb misery for an hour or more before she found the release of tears, and then after a storm of weeping that left her pale-faced and red-eyed she made herself a strong cup of black coffee and took stock.
She had burnt her boats with Lucas. It was consuming, overwhelming and she was frightened at how much it mattered. He had shown her all too succinctly that he could take her or leave her, and he’d decided to leave her. And she couldn’t blame him. She really couldn’t. When she thought of what she’d said…
She moaned softly, the sound echoing round the sitting room like the cry of a small bewildered hurt animal.
Lucas wasn’t like Graham. She stood up quickly, finishing the coffee in a few hard gulps before going upstairs and running a bath. She felt dirty; not because of what she had allowed with Lucas, funnily enough, but because of her accusations. And she hadn’t meant them—even as she’d said them she had known she hadn’t meant them. But Lucas didn’t know that, and he wouldn’t believe her now, whatever she said. He must hate her. She moaned again, hot tears coursing down her cheeks.
She continued to cry all the time she lay in the bath, but by the time she was dressed again in jeans and a long loose jumper she had told herself she had to get herself under control.
In the mercurial way of British weather, the fierce storm of the morning had given way to a mild tranquil September day that even promised sunshine for the afternoon, and Kim glanced at her watch as she came downstairs again. Half-past eleven. Six hours to go before she was due to pick up Melody and she would go mad if she spent them brooding in the house.
She glanced at the telephone and as her hand went out to replace the receiver she stopped herself.
She’d write her resignation now and then post it when she went for a walk; Lucas would receive it tomorrow morning. If he was trying to contact her now she didn’t want to know; the last thing she could do was to talk to him. She would break down and humiliate herself further, beg him to forgive her or something similar, and he had shown her—in words and action—that he was finished with her.
How come it had taken losing him irrevocably to tell her she was the biggest fool in the world? But then perhaps she had never really had him in the first place? Why would a man like Lucas Kane want her? All the old insecurities and doubts flooded in, but although they tried to convince her she had done the right thing, that finishing this affair that wasn’t an affair was the safe and right thing to do, they didn’t hold their normal power.
She should have given him—and herself—a chance. The tumult in her breast was sickening as she realised the enormity of her mistake. He had done everything right, everything, and she had thrown it all back in his face.
And Lucas was right. Graham had won. Even from the grave he was still winning. And she had let him, she had aided and abetted him.
Lucas had said he loved her. Whether that would have led to more, to marriage even, she didn’t know, but now she never would.
She pulled out her notepaper and envelopes, and before she had time to lose her nerve she wrote Lucas a letter telling him exactly how she felt. She wrenched all the barriers down and bared her soul, exposed herself so completely that she felt she’d become a little child again, vulnerable and unprotected. She didn’t beg or plead, she didn’t ask to be taken back either in his heart or as his secretary, she just told him how she felt about him. And she finished by saying she was enclosing her letter of resignation. If he wanted to accept it she understood. If he was willing to give her a second chance he could tear it up and let her know accordingly.
Once she had written her notice and sealed the two pieces of paper in the envelope she felt slightly better.
She would go for a walk. It had been ages since she had walked alone in the fresh air, and she would post the envelope while she was out.
She’d made a mess of everything, a terrible, unforgivable mess, and it had separated her—and Melody—from the one man in all the world she would ever love. If Lucas didn’t love her enough to forgive her she only had herself to blame; she had given him very little in their one-sided relationship. Her one hope was Lucas himself, because he wasn’t like other men. He was head and shoulders above even the best of them.
She left the house quickly, tears trickling down her cheeks again, but once she was walking in the mild September afternoon the tears dried up, although the sick churning in her stomach didn’t get any better.
After posting the letter she went for a walk on nearby woodland that housed an adventure playground, sitting for some time on one of the wooden benches overlooking the children’s playing area with the weak sun warming her face and the musky smell of wet vegetation wafting on the autumn breeze.
It was nearly four o’clock when she ventured home, and as she turned the corner of the street and saw a car parked outside her house she only gave it a cursory glance. The red Cavalier was not a car she recognised.
It was only as she turned on to her drive that the car door opened and Charlie, Lucas’s caretaker at the plant, called her name.
‘Charlie?’ Kim stared at him in absolute amazement. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asked, walking over to the car and peering in at his hoary face. ‘How did you know where I live?’
‘The boss told me.’ It was the way Charlie always referred to Lucas. ‘He was looking for you earlier. He’s been
ringing you all day, from what I can make out, and after he’d come here and you weren’t in, I said I’d come and wait outside.’
‘You did?’ Kim was completely lost but there was something in the old man’s face that was alarming her. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘He’d have come back himself but he thought he’d be more use at the hospital,’ Charlie said disjointedly. ‘And he didn’t want everyone sticking their oar in, nosy lot some of ’em, but you know how he talks to me. Go back a long way, me and the boss. Known him since he was a nipper.’ And then, as though that had reminded him, he said quietly, ‘It’s your little ’un, love. Don’t get yourself in a panic, but she was a bit poorly at school.’
‘Melody?’ Kim’s face drained of colour. ‘Where is she?’
‘At the hospital—that’s where I’m to take you, the boss says.’
‘Oh, Charlie.’ Kim found she was gripping the top of the car door like a lifeline.
Charlie drove to the hospital as though he was competing in Formula One, and once there Kim was whisked away by a sympathetic-faced nurse and led through a bewildering maze of corridors to the children’s wards. The nurse would say nothing beyond Melody had been taken ill at school and they were doing some tests, but the sister who met her at the entrance to the unit was more forthcoming.
‘Suspected meningitis,’ she said very softly after she’d told Kim Melody was in an isolation room. ‘Another child from Melody’s class was brought in with the same thing during the night and the school was informed first thing, fortunately. Has Melody been poorly at all over the last day or two? A little off-colour or feverish?’
‘She’s been a little tired, headachey,’ Kim said numbly, feeling like the worst mother in the world. ‘I wanted to keep her off school this morning, actually, but there were tears and she insisted she wanted to go. They were choosing children for the country dancing display at the summer fête next week.’
